Kickstarter: We live in the gaming future!
Correction: Previously I stated that you couldn’t get painted sets for Mythical Lairs unless you kickstarted at a high level – Kimberly Johnson was kind enough to correct me that all the pieces come pre-washed with dungeon grey, and there are kits that come pre-painted below that high level. Check them out – 11 days to go as of 8.July.2013! Cheers! ~ m
We live in the future guys. Do you remember as a kid (ahem, if you were old enough to remember this) the Virtual Boy for Nintendo? What a dismal failure that was in 1994, but holy cow, Oculus Rift today is now a thing “the first truly immersive virtual reality headset for video games”. An amazing success on Kickstarter that reminded me that we are in an amazing time where we are crowd funding some kick ass things in games. Below are my favorites that I think are worth checking out right now!
To pair with the Oculus Rift, is the Omni. One of the reasons that we all make fun of Virtual Boy, is that it was like sitting at a table sticking your head in a machine you would use to check your eyes at a doctors office, trying to play a video game. The Omni is a magical device that lets you see into the world of virtual reality, but then you’re stuck in that same feeling of sitting at the table with the Virtual Boy. Check out the kickstarter for the Omni – a treadmill circle that allows you to actually walk around in your games. I am known for booting up a game in the wee hours of the morning before work, and I can totally see me loosing track of reality as i’m actually walking around Dawnstar in Skyrim!
The technology here is really in the shoes. They have little nubs (technical term?) that track your pace, pressure, even details like calories burned and distance. This is as close as we’ve ever gotten to the holodeck from Star Trek, and I am SUPER excited. If I could get the Oculus Rift and the Omni to fire up Doom? I will be shrieking like a little girl. $400 will get you the entire kit with the Kickstarter – and while i’m super excited about it, personally i’m holding out until I know that I can also get the Omni and what games I can play with it. But until then, i’ll be shouting off the mountain tops that everyone else should get one! (And then invite me over to play)
Again, i’m not practicing what I preach here – I loooooove the concept here, but as the really poor quality video on their kickstarter page tells you, a lot of the lower level rewards are unpainted kits; I’ve been corrected, these come pre-washed in the dungeon grey, which is WAY better than the white base! I don’t know about you guys, but I SUCK at painting minis. (Last year at PAX Prime, there *may or may not have been an incident where I exploded a whole bottle of yellow paint in the Reaper painting room where I had to run away in shame). So maybe kick in for a cool accessory pack so your D&D mini’s can find a small pile of coins when they kill the bad guys like you do in MMO’s!
This is just a little bit of my childhood right here. A question block lamp that turns on when you punch (lightly tap) the bottom AND it makes the coin noises? I had to fight the urge not to just throw money at my monitor and stare out the window for the FedEx guy to show up any moment. I don’t know where I will put this lamp, but this is something that my gaming household needs (want vs. need is a big debate, and until I get yelled at for how much i’m spending on kickstarters, this is in the need category).
So much of this stuff were only crazy ideas of the future when I was a kid, and now I can help crowd fund them, and I find that incredibly rad. Are there any Kickstarters that you guys are watching now that I should check out? Comment below!
